We started out today by reviewing an advertisement, claimed to have been placed by a couple of cats trying to muscle in on the property market in London.

The advertisement which appeared last week offers a living room for hire (but only until September) in Kensal Rise, in the London Borough of Brent  – but dog owners need not apply as the flat is being offered by a pair of Siamese Cats, who one suspect prospective renters might be expected to feed! 

In part, the offer reads;

“We are a couple of cats living in a large 1 bedroom ground floor flat with a private garden on a quiet street in a great location with great access.

We live with a couple of humans who take care of us, they think the place is theirs, but it’s ours!

The female is not around much so it’s just us and the male. 

The kitchen is built into an extension so there’s extra space in the back they use as a dining room. 

That’s where you’ll usually find him. Aside from watering the plants he never goes into the living room, so we thought we’d rent it out on a room only basis. There’s a comfortable single bed and the couch can also open into a double. 

You can even have a desk in the corner if you do any work from home. Like we said, the male never uses it, so its your private space which we only hope you’ll be cool to let us cats hang in there which we chose to do so sometimes. 

There’s a bathroom, dining room, kitchen and garden that we all share.

We are looking for a professional/student animal lover that would be happy to have us around. Just £1000 pcm all inclusive. Also available on a weekly basis.”

Might be worth considering if PUSS COMES TO SHOVE!

And keeping to an animal theme, in the second hour we learnt that by using recordings, scientists were amazed to discover that elephants have nick names for individual members of their herd, and were actually communicating with each other, by name.

Of course, none of the scientists involved in the study would claim to be “real life” “Dr Doolittles”  but they do believe that a lot of elephant communication is done through deep, reverberating rumbles that can travel up to two kilometres across the Savannah – a kind of trunk call, perhaps! 

Although elephants do not “use names” in the majority of their utterances, scientists believe that by using AI computer models they have been able to establish, with an accuracy of about 28%, sounds being directed to individual herd members. 

It has also been noted that the matriarch of a herd will often stand and point the direction that she wants to go, and call repeatedly which might be something like “let’s go rumble”. But if there is a disagreement over what the matriarch wants, it has been noted that occasionally elephants will then get involved in a discussion. 

Back in 2005 it was discovered that elephants were able to imitate the sounds of other animals and even machines, such as trucks.

Well I never!

I very much hope to have the pleasure of your company once more tomorrow,
Scott